{"id":102,"date":"2006-12-30T23:50:12","date_gmt":"2006-12-30T23:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/?p=102"},"modified":"2007-01-03T04:46:10","modified_gmt":"2007-01-03T04:46:10","slug":"the-trans-pacific-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"The Trans-Pacific Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve made it to New Zealand!  As Jamie mentioned it took 4 flights &#038; 36 hours (23 flying, 13 layover) to get here.  We arrived in Auckland at 2:30pm on Dec 30th, got through customs, then put our bikes back together, strapped on our 8 panniers, 2 handlebar bags, and 2 frame bags, and rode to our first campsite.<\/p>\n<p>For your entertainment here are some highlights from the past two days:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We acquired bike boxes fairly eaily thanks to the nice people at Bike Cycles in Wilmington.  Jamie thought it&#8217;d be a good idea for us to &#8216;test&#8217; fit the bikes in the box.  Thank goodness he did, because it took multiple hours of bike disassembly to cram them into the boxes.   We both worked ourselves into quite a frenzy in my mom&#8217;s garage: Jamie was running around in a sweating fit &#038; I was taping up boxes with wild abandon &#038; much excess tape.<\/li>\n<li>Momentary panic attack when we realized the bikes, their giant boxes, and all our panniers were not going to fit in the two small cars we&#8217;d planned to drive to the airport in the morning.  Aunt Beverly saved the day by letting us use her SUV &#8211; everything fit in perfectly.<\/li>\n<li>Wilmington to LAX went smoothly.  Upon checking in at the international desk we were informed we&#8217;d need Australian visas for our 3 hour layover in Sydney.  WHAT?!  Just the day before United had told me we wouldn&#8217;t need visas&#8230;  We applied for them at the United ticket desk and thankfully they were approved.   The lady helping us really freaked us out when she said &#8220;Sometimes last minute visas are denied, I really don&#8217;t know why and there is nothing I can do about it.  So if that happens, you two are on your own.&#8221; Ack!!<\/li>\n<li>Got to Sydney.  Our longest leg (14 hour flight) went very smoothly.  We slept for a few hours, woke up &#038; took Benadryl, then slept again.  Thanks Mom for the Benadryl!<\/li>\n<li>Had to go through security again in Sydney.  Our allen wrenches &#038; socket set, which we&#8217;d been carrying with us since Wilmington, were confiscated as &#8216;banned items&#8217;.  Much panic ensued again &#8211; we needed those tools to put our bikes back together in Auckland!  We begged and bargained and the very nice people at New Zealand Air finally agreed to take one of our carry-ons, stick the bikes tools in it, and process it as checked baggage.<\/li>\n<li>During customs in Auckland we were stopped because one of the trained dogs smelled something illegal in one of our bags.  NZ is extremely strict about bringing fruit, vegetables, meat, and milk products into the country.  The dog was apparently smelling the apples we&#8217;d had in our carryon but had eating before landing.  They searched the bag to make sure there were no more illegal apples, then let us pass through.<\/li>\n<li>Customs also took away our tent and sent it for inspection in the &#8216;BioHazard Protection&#8217; room (or something like that).  They were inspecting it for seeds &#038; foreign plant material.  We passed the test and our tent was returned in a giant messy heap.  ugh!  So I got the lovely job of re-rolling and re-stuffing our tent into its bag on the sidewalk outside the airport.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Auckland airport has a very nice area with bike work stands where we put our bikes back together.  Everything came through just fine with only a few minor scrapes &#038; we successfully reassembled everything.  Hurray!   We then rolled out of the airport &#8211; on the LEFT side of the road, very tricky &#8211; towards our first camp site.  Only 13 km on a not-too-scary road.  We set up the tent, ate a little bit, chatted with some fellow campers and went to bed at 9:30pm.  We both slept through the night just fine, woke up in the morning at a decent time, and today we have been feeling normal.  Is it possible to adjust to jet lag that quickly?  I hope so!<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s me with our bikes &#038; baggage feeling very relieved that everything made it:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/WindowsLiveWriter\/OurTransPacificTrip_EF90\/Picture%20003%5B1%5D1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\" style=\"border: 0px none \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/WindowsLiveWriter\/OurTransPacificTrip_EF90\/Picture%200031.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Putting bikes back together in Auckland airport:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/WindowsLiveWriter\/OurTransPacificTrip_EF90\/Picture%20005%5B1%5D1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\" style=\"border: 0px none \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/WindowsLiveWriter\/OurTransPacificTrip_EF90\/Picture%200051.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Campsite:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/WindowsLiveWriter\/OurTransPacificTrip_EF90\/Picture%20010%5B1%5D1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\" style=\"border: 0px none \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/WindowsLiveWriter\/OurTransPacificTrip_EF90\/Picture%200101.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve made it to New Zealand! As Jamie mentioned it took 4 flights &#038; 36 hours (23 flying, 13 layover) to get here. We arrived in Auckland at 2:30pm on Dec 30th, got through customs, then put our bikes back together, strapped on our 8 panniers, 2 handlebar bags, and 2 frame bags, and rode [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.erck.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}